Your Wednesday Author Interview: Chris Roberson

Here at By The Way I'm always looking for new ways to keep you amused and interested and reading, and so now I'm happy to announced the debut of a new, hopefully weekly feature: Your Wednesday Author Interview!

The idea here is simple: On Wednesdays, I'm going to introduce you to an author who has a new book coming out, and I'm going to invite him or her to chat a little about the work and themselves. If this is successful, what I'll be able to do is build out a schedule of author interviews, so I'll be able to announce who I am interviewing a week or two in advance -- and you will be able to post questions for the author which we can incorporate into the interview. Also in the near future I'll post information here for published authors (and their publicists) on how to get interviewed here and to let people know about their newly-released books.

If everything works out it'll be a fun way to meet authors and get to know about the writing life. This is all a work in progress -- we're still working out the kinks on our end -- but, to utterly mangle a metaphor, it's best just to dive in and have fun with it while we're hitting our stride.

Our first author interviewee is Chris Roberson, author of the new "planetary romance" Paragaea, which Publishers Weekly praised thusly: "His colorful characters and setting transport readers to a simpler era when every story offered new worlds to explore." Chris is also the author of the time-traveling novel Here, There & Everywhere, in which -- among other things -- the Beatles kept recording after 1970. That's a universe I want to live in.

1. Quick! Tell us a little bit about yourself and about Paragaea.

Certainly. I’m a science fiction writer, a small press publisher, and big old geek. I live in Austin, Texas with my wife Allison and our two-year-old daughter Georgia, who’s already smarter than the two of us combined.

Paragaea is either my eighth published novel, or my second, depending on where one starts counting, but it's the one of which I'm the proudest so far. Of everything I've written to date, this one comes closest to being the kind of book that, as a reader, I'd like to find on the shelf. It’s the product of reading too many Edgar Rice Burroughs novels and Flash Gordon comics as a kid, as well as watching far too many hours of Land of the Lost. It’s the story of a Soviet-era female cosmonaut who falls through a hole in space and finds herself in a strange new world, one filled with jaguar men, ancient androids, pterosaur-riding pirates, and talking metal trees—in other words, the same old, same old.

2. You describe your book as "A Planetary Romance." How does a "romance" differ from what most people generally think of as "a novel"?

I use “planetary romance” as a kind of triple-entendre. The term itself is used to define the kind of science fantasy adventure that was popular in the early decades of the twentieth century. Things like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars, or Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon are perfect examples. These were adventure stories about people from the “real world” who through misadventure found themselves on strange, often primitive worlds, where they had to survive by their wits and their fists. As science fiction “grew up” in the later decades of the twentieth century, these kinds of stories tended to be told less and less often, but I was curious to see whether it was possible to capture the same sort of visceral thrills that I found in those old stories, but to do it using plausible science rather than hand-waving “magic.” Paragaea was the result.

The story, though, is also about the planet itself, Paragaea. The narrative, while hopefully being a rollicking adventure story, also serves as a sort of travelogue of this strange alien world that I’ve had rolling around my head the last few years. The characters don’t visit every nook and cranny, naturally, but they manage to go on a pretty exhaustive whistle-stop tour of the place, visiting the biggest tourist attractions along the way.

And, finally, the story is a romance. The main character, Akilina “Leena” Chirikova, is a dedicated citizen of the Soviet Union, and isn’t interested in anything but fulfilling her duty. When she meets Hieronymus Bonaventure, a timelost British naval officer from the days of the Napoleonic Wars, she slowly begins to suspect that there might be more to life than service to the state.

3. In addition to being a writer, you're also an editor and a publisher. Do your experiences in those field make an impact on how you write? Does being a writer make an impact on how you edit and publish?

I have a very large head (which is a malady I’ve passed onto my daughter), so luckily I’m pretty comfortable wearing so many hats. But I do sometimes find it strange to shift gears back and forth between my different jobs. The guiding principle behind all three, though, is the same, so it isn’t as difficult as it might otherwise seem. Essentially, what I try to do is produce the kind of book that, as a reader, I’d want to read myself. That’s true of the books I write, of those I edit, and those I publish. When I’m writing something, and I can feel myself getting bored with the process, I know that the reader is likely to get bored at the same point, as well, so it’s time to mix things up a bit; the same litmus test holds for projects I’m editing.

I know a lot of people who edit and write can really get themselves wrapped around the axle agonizing over every line when they write, but I’ve managed to develop a writing approach that helps curtail most of that sort of trauma. My method is to work out the nuts and bolts of a chapter or scene in excruciating detail before I ever write a single word of it, outlining what happens in every paragraph, beat by beat. That way, when I go to write, I don’t have to spare a second thought for what’s going to happen next, and can just concentrate on how to describe it.

Beyond that, I count myself extraordinarily lucky to have experienced as many different aspects of the publishing business as I have, and I still learn new things about how it all works on a pretty regular basis. The one negative consequence of all of it is that I never got to have that happy “My-book-got-published!” glow we’re meant to get when my first novel showed up on the shelves of Barnes & Noble, because as a publisher I have access to BookScan and knew precisely how many copies sold that day, in what sorts of stores and in what parts of the country. And when a book of mine gets a positive review somewhere like Entertainment Weekly, I know for a fact that the credit for that can be laid squarely at the feet of the publisher’s marketing department, and not because I’ve churned out a timeless masterpiece of deathless prose. But I get to read and write science fiction books for a living, so what do I have to complain about? Not a thing.

4. Share a useful piece of writing advice you were given.

All good writing advice boils down to two essential principles: Read Widely and Write Constantly. No one can be a good writer who doesn’t do both. Read everything you can get your hands on (literary novels, “pulp” novels, nonfiction, biographies, science texts, comic books, encyclopedias, magazines) and write something every day.

I’ve read comic books since I was a kid, and used to catch a lot of flack for it in school, but I had a creative writing teacher in college (one of two creative writing classes I ever took, and the only one in which I learned anything) who once praised me for not “neglecting” things like comic books and pulp science fiction novels while studying English literature. That really stuck with me. Too much of any one thing makes for an unfulfilling diet, whether its Proust or Pratchett or pulp.

From author Harlan Ellison I picked up the exercise of writing a short story a day. This was in my mid-twenties, and my rule was that I couldn’t go to bed at night without finishing a story. It didn’t have to be great, it didn’t even have to be good, but it had to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. I managed to keep it up for a bit over a month before deciding to change the rules a bit, and started writing somewhat longer stories at a rate of one a week. Eventually, I was writing a novel a year, and then a couple of novels a year. Science fiction author Jay Lake has recently described his learning process, which was similar to mine, as analogous to weight training or studying a martial art, and I think he’s quite right. Writing is a skill like any other, and you get better by practicing at it. It’s really as simple as that.

5. Both this work and your previous novel Here, There & Everywhere posit alternate universes, where things are kind of like here on our Earth... and yet kind of not. Seriously, now, do think think there are alternate universes, or is it just a fun way to spin "what if" scenarios?

I think the math certainly supports the idea. I’ve never held with all this collapsing waveform Copenhagen Interpretation nonsense. For me, it’s the Many Worlds Theorem all the way. This is the idea behind movies like Sliding Doors and The One (and, I suppose, every sitcom that ever did a holiday-special version of It’s a Wonderful Life), which boils down to this: every decision creates its own reality. Every time anything—a photon, a billiard ball, or a person—is faced with the decision of choosing from more than one option, each outcome actually happens, but in its own universe. Scientists often call this system of constantly branching universes the “multiverse” (just like Michael Moorcock novels and Superman comics), and while I usually call it the Myriad in my stories, it’s the same idea.

Of course, the Many Worlds theorem is all based on math that’s far over my head, and there’s every chance that some clever young physicist will come along any day now and prove the whole thing wrong. That’s why it’s strangely comforting to me that it isn’t the only way you can get a multiverse. There’s another theory I quite like, too. It says that, if space is infinite (and a good number of cosmologists think it is), then there’s room enough for everything. That is, anything that can happen, does happen, somewhere else. They’ve even worked out, based on the number of atoms in the observable universe, how far you’d have to travel in a straight line before you ran into another Earth, with another copy of you on it, identical in all respects. It’s pretty dang far, naturally, and there’s no conceivable way that we know of to make contact with any potential doppelgangers, much less make the trek all the way there, but it’s nice to know they could be out there, all the same.

I find this a terrifically liberating, even empowering, idea. If it’s true, and I like to think it is, then it means there’s no such thing as fate. No future is carved in stone, because all futures are possible. Since every decision creates its own reality, we need to be really careful what decisions we make, because in doing so we are able to choose the kind of future we’re going to live in.

When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up in a future where I got to read science fiction novels and comics and get paid for it, and make a living telling stories. I must have been fortunate enough to make some of the right decisions along the way, because that’s exactly where I’ve ended up. (It would have been nice to have gotten my flying car and army of robot monkeys, too, but you can’t have everything.)

6. Paragaea has its own Web site -- which among other things features an entire prequel novel for people to read and enjoy. Why write a whole novel and give it away to support another novel? Outline the thinking, here.

Well, I didn’t write it to give away, I wrote it for people to read. It was originally published in a Print-on-Demand edition years ago, and I think a grand total of six people might have read it, several of whom are related to me. The novel, Set the Seas on Fire, is a nautical adventure in the days of the Napoleonic Wars, mashed up with a romance between a British naval officer and the daughter of the chief of a South Pacific island paradise, mixed in liberally with Polynesian zombies. Apparently, the world wasn’t ready for that combination, just yet.

A few years later, I brought back the protagonist of Set the Seas on Fire as the male lead in Paragaea: A Planetary Romance, transporting him to this other dimension for new adventures with Leena Chirikova. In the lead up to the new book’s release, there were a few nibbles of interest about reprinting Set the Seas on Fire, but they never really went anywhere; apparently, the world still isn’t ready for the nautical adventure/romance with Polynesian zombies.

In the meantime, I’d become deeply jealous of all of the science fiction writers who’d started giving away electronic copies of their novels online. Cory Doctorow led the charge with this, along with people like Charles Stross. Cory’s always said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that a writer’s biggest problem isn’t poor sales, it’s lack of readers. At this stage of my career, I couldn’t agree more; I’d much rather have more readers than a larger advance on my next novel, because more readers will translate into better sales farther down the line. Cory’s solution to this is making works freely available online, and I think there’s a lot of wisdom to that.

(I’d been involved in something similar a few years ago, an online magazine called Clockwork Storybook, but the problem that we ran into was that no one had the slightest notion who we were. We built a readership, but it was small, and extremely slow growing, and in the end didn’t translate into a book-buying audience of any appreciable size.)

When it came time to start promoting Paragaea, I realized that couldn’t convince my publisher to let me give away the milk for free, but that I had another cow all loaded and ready, as it were. Making Set the Seas on Fire available under a Creative Commons license, there to download for free in a variety of formats, serves a number of purposes. It helps promote the new book, which is good, but it also gives readers a chance to read what I think is a pretty darned good book in its own right. If someone reads the prequel and enjoys it, I win, and if they read it and decide they have to pick up Paragaea to see what happens next, so much the better.

***

I'd like to thank Chris for taking the time to be our first interview. Chris also has a blog of his own -- stop by there and say hello.

Next Week: Author Nick Sagan discusses his new novel Everfree and more.

Your Turn: Thoughts and comments about this interview? Drop them in the comment thread. Help me make this an interesting weekly feature for you.

Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry

This entry has 6 comments: (Add your own)

#6 Comment from memes121
5/10/06 8:28 AM | Permalink

Happy Birthday John! This is a great idea. Now, who's gonna interview you?
#5 Comment from johnmscalziEntry Author
5/10/06 8:12 AM | Permalink

"Is it going to be mostly Sci-Fi authors?"

No, I'm trying to go for the whole range of authors. The first two are SF authors (because I know them personally and they were available on short notice, and had books coming out this month), but interviewee #3 is a mystery novelist, and hopefully in the end we'll have a good mix of writers.
#4 Comment from dpoem
5/10/06 7:54 AM | Permalink

Happy Birthday, John.

I really like this new weekly feature. Is it going to be mostly Sci-Fi authors, or are you going to try and stretch it out into other genre's as well?

Great job. Now, go eat some cake!

-Dan
http://journals.aol.com/dpoem/TheWisdomofaDistractedMind/
#3 Comment from plittle
5/10/06 7:13 AM | Permalink

Making a novel available online for free. Where have I heard that before? Oh, yeah! Byzantium's Shores.
;) Happy Birthday, John.
-Paul
#2 Comment from mavarin
5/10/06 1:15 AM | Permalink

And if I could just get through a comment without at least one serious typo, that would make your birthday that much better.

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Your Wednesday Author Interview: Chris Roberson